Rejections, Meet Undaunted Writer

I'm not gonna pretend I wasn't disappointed with my recent rash of rejections from the Indiana Review, Ploughshares, One Story, Crazyhorse, New South, Colorado Review + the Calvino Prize where I wasn't even a finalist (ah yes, licking my wounds from that one).

But yo, rejection is the name of the game in this industry. Rejection is the rule + acceptance is always the beautiful exception. We all know that. And since I still have other manuscripts on the burner, really, it doesn't get me down too much. Sure, I get snarly + pissed off sometimes. I frequently tell fiction readers + editors to fuck off out loud when I get rejections, but I also know it's not personal. People are controlled by both aesthetic preferences + taste. We pretend it's about literary merit, but mostly it's about what we like.

Anyway, to appropriate SC's slogan, I'm gonna fight on motherfuckers. I'm a talented writer like thousands of other fiction writers in this country, but I'm also fiercely determined. Stubborn too. And I'm just gonna keep on writing, submitting, revising. Though I only got 3 stories accepted in 2009, they were also my best pick-ups since I started submitting short stories to journals. And recent submissions to the Missouri Review, Quarterly West, BOMB, Witness, Alaska Quarterly Review, Quarter Past 8, Mid-American Review, Threepenny Review, Black Warrior Review, North American Review + Harper's helps keep the faith alive. I write big, I dream big + I submit big. And every now + then, these three worlds converge for a brief moment.

Rejections, come again, son. I remain battle-tested + undaunted by you.

Good Rejection from New South

Dear Mr. Bliss-

My name is Peter Fontaine and I am the prose editor for New South. I'm writing in regards to your electronic submission of [ ] to our publication. While I enjoyed the humor and some of the more interesting elements of the story, we can't place it right now for our journal. Thank you for taking the time to submit and for your patience as we read and deliberated over your story. Good luck placing [ ] elsewhere, and please think of us again when you are sending out new fiction.

New Wave of Submissions for Fall 2008

Because talent isn't enough in the world of lit. fiction, I've submitted manuscripts (self-contained novel chapters, short stories and lyrical essays) to the following journals for Fall 2008 (electronically, of course):

McSweeney's, One Story, Nimrod, 9th Letter, Indiana Review, Black Warrior Review Fiction Contest, Meridian, Virginia Quarterly Review, 3rd Coast, Ploughshares, Emerson Review, The Literary Review, Sentence, Quick Fiction, A Public Space, The Kenyon Review, Cimarron Review, AGNI, The Baltimore Review, Witness + The New South.

Should I expect more heartache and agonizingly long wait periods, followed by a storm of rejection letters and a bunch of generic form emails based more on taste than technique? Of course. Do I think my odds are slim to none that most of these journals will pick up something of mine? Yes, I do. Do I still have the same naive hope that this time things will be different? Of course. Please read my Writing Is A Viral Entry if you want to know why. Will I let the staggering odds against me prevent me from slowly developing my fiction career? Absolutely not.

See, this is my attitude: I already know that I'm a gifted fiction writer. I'm just waiting for the rest of publishing world to figure this out. In the meantime, I'm going to keep paying my dues and continue improving as a new voice in fiction until I can finally get editors to see my talent. Yes, it's difficult. But I knew this going into it.